Day 11 of 21 - Psalms 12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words, Like silver tried in a furnace of earth, Purified seven times.

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Before we could go anywhere today i had to do three loads of laundry, yes I had to do laundry on vacation...after 11 days and a family of four the hamper was stuffed! So to make room for more dirty clothes laundry was a necessity 😊

Once chores were done we headed east on I90 to "The Silver Capital of the World", a mining town called Wallace, where we went to the Sierra Silver Mine tour. We were taken to and from the mine aboard an 18 passenger trolley. Then, an actual retired silver miner was our guide as we walked through the main drift of a real underground silver mine. It was so educational and informative as he shared his personal mining experiences, we learned about modern and historical methods used to mine silver, gold, lead, zinc, and copper and it was about 50 degrees down in the mine, pretty refreshing from the almost 90 degrees above! Our guide "Bob" demonstrated the operation of real mining equipment and even chose Ryan to help him demonstrate one of them! We learned so much about mining and it gave us all a real respect for the profession for sure! After the tour we walked the old town and checked out some pretty cool antique shops. Yes, our kids LOVE antique shopping! We've had them watch Antique Roadshow one too many times I guess 😊.

After we stopped at Walmart (I feel like I've been to every Walmart from Cali to Canada) we came back to the campground for dinner and then headed to the city of Coeur d'Alene to check it out and take Roxy for a walk. The city Main Street was primarily upscale restaurants with sidewalk dining...they all looked way out of our budget and style :/. The city park walkway along the lake did not allow dogs on the grass so Roxy was not happy :/. The houses along the lake were very, very fancy and way out of our budget and style too. There were fancy high rise condos and hotels along the lake too...I guess Phil Robertson would call it "yuppysville". The lake is very pretty though and surrounded by timber, it had lots of boaters and water-skiers on it.

We learned that Coeur d'Alene is the French name given to the Schee-Chu-Umsh Indians by French fur traders in an attempt to describe their sharp trading practices. They were said to have hearts (Coeur) as sharp as the point of an awl (Alene)...very interesting...or not.

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